MILWAUKEE (WI)
Superior Telegram
Chuck Quirmbach, Wisconsin Public Radio
A federal appeals court ruled on Monday that a $58 million Catholic cemetery trust fund may have to go into a pool of money available to clergy abuse victims in Milwaukee.
The Chicago-based U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said that Milwaukee-based federal judge Rudolph Randa was wrong to keep the cemetery trust fund out of the four-year Milwaukee archdiocese bankruptcy case.
Peter Isely of the Survivor’s Network of Those Abused by Priests said the appellate ruling is like hitting the reset button for the bankruptcy case.
“We’re hoping that this decision, and what’s going to come from it, is going to reverse the direction that we’ve seen so far, which has been very, very against survivors,” said Isely.
He said he also hopes the ruling will help shed more light on why New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan and the Vatican set up the trust fund when Dolan was Milwaukee’s archbishop.
A lawyer representing the cemetery trust says the appellate decision casts a shadow over religious freedom.
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